Leandro Erlich - Liminal
Some things in life are solitary, lonesome endeavours. Like peeking at the neighbours from safely behind your window blinds, or staring through a peephole while standing behind a locked and bolted door. It’s a bit awkward to be caught in the act, but that’s exactly what will happen to you, repeatedly, in a show covering two decades of work by Leandro Erlich.
Erlich makes the kind of social media savvy work that elicits “oh wow!” reactions and reposts. In person, however, his immersive installations do so much more to your psyche.
There’s a mirror maze that forces you to climb through a series of dressing rooms, each only big enough for one, making it incredibly awkward when others are navigating the maze. I not sure if awkwardness was the point, but I felt almost embarrassed to be seen enjoying myself. And I was greatly enjoying myself, as was an overzealous security guard that kept following people around the exhibits, giddily exclaiming “It’s an illusion!” to anyone and everyone whose attention she could commandeer. An annoyingly intrusive proxy for the childlike wonder we were all feeling but not saying out loud.
Maybe that’s because in museums we’re conditioned to ‘appreciate in silence’ and ‘look but don’t touch’. Except here, once you get past the fun-house magic reactions, everything reeks of loneliness. A few items, such as watching your laundry tumble dry or staring out the window of a plane, are generously sized for two. But when was the last time you did either of these with a partner? How do you think you might react doing it now, in a museum with an audience?!
It’s telling that the most engaged installation, at least as regards guests interacting with each other, was set outside. Swimming pools are natural locations for interplay, and here you’ll experience an empty one covered with a thin layer of water that allows you to have a dry fish-eye experience looking up at the world above as it gawps back down at you. It was fun and full of laughs, unlike the apocalyptic Classroom, the most visibly eerie of the installs.
Dim lights and a one-way mirror enable ghostly visions of guests sitting on boxes to be perceived as part of an abandoned classroom. Old books are splayed on orderly but dusty desks. Debris is strewn across ripped up floorboards. The clock is askew and frozen in time. What does it mean, and why is everything so run down and distressed? The flag implies an indictment of the American scholastic system, but maybe Erlich was simply bullied in school?
Mixing everyday experiences with impossible illusions, and it’s unnerving to so frequently go from awkward to awe to unsettled and back, but that’s the impact these installations are likely to provoke. In a way, that security guard was right. These are essentially just visual tricks. The art is what happens when you react.
At Pérez Art Museum Miami (@PAMM) until 04 Sept
Tickets from $16 Adult. Discounts available.
Visit leandroerlich.art or follow @leandroerlichofficial on Instagram for more information about the artist.